The Office of Naval Research worked with ETC to advance Machine-assisted Discovery and Invention (MD&I) for the accelerated design of next-generation energetic molecules and materials. Building on research, ETC demonstrated that AI/ML methods could be successfully applied to the data-sparse energetics domain, enabling faster discovery of advanced explosive technologies.
ETC developed machine learning models to predict energetic material properties from molecular features and implemented generative AI to identify novel energetic candidates. The team also created a founding method for predicting full-scale formulation performance, allowing researchers to evaluate the effects of formulation changes at the weapon scale. In parallel, ETC developed natural language processing tools that extracted insights from technical literature and combined them with molecular data to improve energetic property predictions.
ETC delivered this suite of AI/ML tools to Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head and shared capabilities with the Office of Naval Research, Army Research Laboratory, and Department of Energy laboratories, furthering energetics research and advancing AI-enabled design across the defense enterprise.
